Adams, Indians at Oswald

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

By Henry Sweets

Jackson Hole, Wyoming - For the Holiday Artwalk on Dec. 27, the Oswald Gallery is showing a rare collection of Ansel Adams prints and intriguing portraits of a Crow Warrior Ceremony.

In one room hang a dozen or so 6x8 inch contact prints taken in the mid- 1920s on Adams early view camera. Three smaller 4x5 inch prints hang on the facing wall. Those were taken when Adams was around 21 years old. One is priced at $125,000.

The prints are vintage, made within a year of the 1920s negatives.

Adams started playing with cameras when he was about 14 years, and during his late teens and early 20s, he cut his teeth on a couple of different cameras in Yosemite National Park and the high Sierras.

Looking at the photos, it is easy to imagine Adams – an eager, oddballish kid with a photographic memory and a crooked nose racing through the High Sierra – stopping at beautiful places to set up a camera, “visualize” how a photograph should look and experiment with technical elements to accomplish that image.

To express how a scene felt, Adams used exposure and aperture to tweak how the image looked. He eventually developed an understanding of light and the camera that has changed the way people take photos.

In the prints, now at the Oswald Gallery, owner Glen Oswald pointed out tonal adjustments and fields-of-view that Adams experimented with while discovering his technical style.

The prints could be considered “practice” for prints hanging in the foyer of the gallery, like “View of the Snake River Range” and “The Moon Rising Over Hernandez, NM.” But they wield their own aesthetic power that goes beyond their historical value.

Oswald said they show the “nascent artistic vision” of one of time’s great master photographers.

The show is a must-see for any artie. The iconic images you have seen a thousand times on posters or in books are more captivating in person, and the images taken with the view camera allude to a younger Adams, traipsing around the high sierra with a contraption that fascinated him, and he would someday become famous with.


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“Crow Warriors” by Wouter Deruytter show Native Americans in a way they are usually not seen, caught in a “cross time,” the artist said.

Deruytter has photographed male life-partner performance artists who live a 19th century existence in Brooklyn, horses in Arabia, a transgender scene in New York and the intimate postures Montana rodeo cowboys adopt when no women are watching.

Then he met the Real Bird family of Crow Indians through a caretaker of a friend’s ranch. The Real Birds claim to be the descendents of the Crows who defeated Custer. Deruytter became friends with them and over a few years photographed their re-enactment of Custer’s Last Stand.

“I thought those Indians were very noble, so my approach to them was like a very noble portrait as much as possible,” Deruytter said. “There is a white background usually, and they are sitting on horses which is noble.”

Most of the photos show men and boys wearing loin cloths and different patterns of war paint. They are mounted on a white or gray horse against a milky sky.
But their postures are all a bit slumped. They look authentic and noble, but somehow unsure of their place.

“I like to show that they are a little uncomfortable in this position, you know, they live in their Adidas sneakers, and its only one day a year they do [the re-enactment],” Deruytter said. “I have a feeling they want to imitate us, but I think they can do much better.”

The photographs are an intimate and surreal snapshot of that time. There is something human and haunting about them. 

Photo: The East Vidette at Sunset, Bubbs Creek, Kings Canyon, California
image date: 1925, print date: 1925 vintage gelatin silver print by the artist, 4 5/8 x 3 1/2 inches.

PERMALINK:
Adams, Indians at Oswald | Planet JH News Article: Arts Beat

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